Making Art Together Collage Drawing

Host Your Own Valentine-Making Party!

Meghan Burch
February 7, 2015
For years at The Carle, the Art Studio’s annual Valentine-Making Party has been a way for families to spend time making together while also avoiding the stress and mess of helping children make their classroom Valentines.
A pile of handmade valentines with cut-paper hearts, stamped phrases of love, and drawings.

Since this event has not only been helpful for families and small friend groups, but lots of fun too, I thought I’d walk you through a Valentine-Making Party in the Art Studio. We hope our event might inspire fun ways for your family, friends, library, class, home school group, Girl Scout Troup, or whatever group to celebrate love and creativity together. You could even put one of these on for a Valentine’s Day themed wedding!

The day before our event, we set up a large table for all our materials and tools. We set it up much like you would a dinner buffet.

A buffet of valentine-making supplies including colorful papers, paper bags, and a tray of example valentines.

Instead of plates and silverware at the starting end, we placed a festive welcome sign with instructions, small empty baskets for collecting materials, and paper bags containing blank cards for our guests to use. The paper bags included three folded cards (cardstock cut in half then folded) and seven flat cards (cardstock cut into quarters).

An adult holds a stack of colorful blank cards and a small brown paper bag.

On one side of the table we placed trays of collage paper: warm colors, cool colors, clipart, Valentine-y sayings that we made up or found, black and white patterns, paper doilies, pieces of old maps, and painted paper scraps. A few years we even had processed postage stamps from a stamp collection a staff member gave us.

A buffet of valentine-making supplies set out on trays, including colorful papers, printed phrases, and signs with suggestions on how to make valentines.
One of the trays included pictures that photocopied from a clip art book. We paired them up with Valentine-y friendship sayings like “I’m glad you’re in by school!” and I’m buggy for you, Valentine!” If you don’t have a clip art book, try a Google image search for “free vintage clipart ___.” Fill in the blank with whatever kinds of images you want to find. We also photocopied a few sayings that we created with vintage-looking letter stamps.
A stack of clip art images of fish and birds alongside the printed phrase "I'm glad you're in my school!".
Along the other two edges of the table we put crayons, markers, colored pencils, black and white gel pens, glue sticks, white glue, dot stickers, plain and funky-edged scissors, and punches of various shapes. We go into detail about some of these materials in our favorite materials article, so check them out if you want more specifics about the materials we love to use.
A tray of valentine examples with collages and drawings.
In the middle of the table, we put a tray with Valentine inspiration and a printout of instructions for a simple folded Valentine using the tracing of a child’s hand. The great thing about setting up Valentine-making materials this way is that it creates a place for experimentation and fun. There’s no right or wrong way to make a Valentine when the materials are available with little instruction or expectation.
A child collages with colorful papers to make a ladybug on a valentine card.
A child unfolds a valentine card that looks like two hands together, connected at the thumbs and pointer fingers to create the negative space of a heart.
A child cuts a printed phrase that says "Bee my friend" and attaches it to their valentine card.
A child holds up a blue paper heart with a written name on it and a drawing of a person.
A child holds up a valentine card with a drawing of a person and a collaged snowflake.
A child draws a smiling face onto a paper doily.

Here’s to lovingly making something with and for the special people in your life!

At the time of this posting, Making Art with Children was generously sponsored by the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority.

Meghan, smiling and wearing a grey shirt with a blue background.

Meghan Burch

Art Educator from 2003-2016, Meghan has a BFA in Illustration from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She tries to think with materials and work with her hands every day.
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